"Hillary Clinton’s Top Five Clashes Over Secrecy" by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica 3/13/2015
The latest flap over her private emails as secretary of state is far from the first time she’s been accused of lacking transparency.
Back in April of 2007, when she was campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination for the first time, then-Senator Hillary Clinton lashed out at the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.
She told a New Hampshire audience that if elected she would implement a "plan to enhance accountability and transparency" and "to replace secrecy and mystery with openness." One part of her plan: "It's time our government went fully online as well."
She lost her White House bid. But 20 months later, before Barack Obama took that job and she became secretary of state, she set up a private computer server registered to her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to handle all her official, as well as private, emails for the next four years. Her decision — a secret until earlier this month — impeded efforts by the press and others to review State Department actions.
Today it is Hillary Clinton's record of transparency that has come under fire. At a press conference Tuesday, she acknowledged that in retrospect "it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts." She has asked the State Department to release her official emails, a process that could take months.
Few public figures have been as scrutinized as Hillary Clinton. Sometimes her disclosures go beyond what is required, but she's also racked up a reputation for secrecy that at times has returned to haunt her.
Here are five examples covering the last two decades. Some are drawn from a 2007 book I did, with Don Van Natta Jr., entitled "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton." (Little Brown & Co.) Clinton's office didn't respond to a request for comment.
1) 1992: The Commodity Trades
During Bill Clinton's first run for the White House, his campaign declined to release all of the couple's tax returns. Later it emerged that the campaign had weighed requests from the press and decided not to do so, because a few of the returns showed Hillary Clinton's spectacular success in commodities trading, in which she made almost $100,000 from an initial investment of $1,000 in a matter of months for a return of almost 10,000 percent. Hillary Clinton threatened a campaign lawyer who had access to the material with retribution if she released the data: "You'll never work in Democratic politics again," the lawyer, Loretta Lynch, says Clinton told her. It wasn't until 1994, as the New York Times prepared to publish an article detailing the trades, that the Clintons made public the returns.
2) 1993: The Health Care Task Force
As First Lady, Clinton led a Presidential task force to overhaul the U.S. health care system. The group, which produced a 1,342-page bill that failed to win approval, came under intense criticism from lawmakers and interest groups for meeting behind closed doors. Several court challenges were brought in an attempt to open the process. Ultimately the courts provided a partial legal victory to the administration. Clinton later wrote she didn't mind the criticism since she was "trying to do something important for people" but acknowledged the failure was partially the result of her "own missteps" in "trying to do too much, too fast."
3) 1994: Records from the Rose Law Firm
U.S. investigators in 1994 subpoenaed the First Lady's billing records from her years at the Rose Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, documents that had been also sought by reporters. A focus of their interest was her legal work for a failing savings and loan, but records of those billings weren't found. Much later, Clinton's long-time assistant, Carolyn Huber, said she found in the White House residence an additional box of records that contained the billing memos. They were turned over to the independent counsel in 1996. Clinton testified she had no knowledge of how the records wound up where they did.
4) 2006: The Energy Task Force
Late in her first term as U.S. senator from New York, Clinton set up an energy task force to help her work through the issue, deliver a major speech on the subject and prepare for a possible Presidential run, participants in the task force told us for the book. They produced a 40-page report in April 2006. The whole project, including the existence of the group, its members and its work product was a secret, designed, participants said, to encourage frank discussions of the issue. The leader of the task force headed an investment firm with major holdings in the energy sector. Senators routinely get input from outsiders and no law requires their disclosure, but a secret task force is unusual.
5) 2015: The Family Foundation
The Clinton family foundation, now called the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, made disclosures that exceed the legal requirements. Charities are not required to list donors, but as part of Clinton's selection as Secretary of State the foundation agreed to disclose the identity of contributors and restrict solicitations from foreign governments. Still, the information on the foundation's website is less than full. Donors are identified but not the exact amount of each donation or the date of those contributions. Instead donations fall under ranges and are listed cumulatively. The foundation did not announce that it started raising money from foreign governments after Hillary Clinton left office. But last month the Wall Street Journal pieced together some new foreign donations after the foundation's web site was updated. That article was the first in a spate of news accounts raising questions about foreign money coming into the Clinton network as she prepares a run for President. The foundation has said donors are carefully vetted and their money goes to important charitable projects.
"Email Escapades MuckReads Edition: Hillary is Just the Latest Politician to Avoid Official Email" by Leticia Miranda, ProPublica 3/13/2015
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive ever since the New York Times first reported that she used a private email account for government business. In light of the imbroglio, we decided to look at the email escapades of other politicos for this week's MuckReads:
Colin Powell relied on personal emails while secretary of state, Politico, March 2015
Since news of Clinton's use of private email for White House business broke, an aide to Colin Powell says he "might have occasionally used personal email addresses" to correspond with staff and officials during his tenure as Secretary of State.
Bush Advisers' Approach on E-Mail Draws Fire, The New York Times, April 2007
The Bush Administration admits that as many as 22 political advisers to the president, including Karl Rove, used their Republican National Committee email accounts for White House related business. At the time, the RNC automatically purged emails after 30 days. Later, a White House spokesperson reported that as many as 5 million emails could have been lost from the White House's official server.
Jeb Bush Owned Personal Email Server He Used as Governor, NBC News, March 2015
A Mar. 4, 2015 report from NBC News finds that between 1999 until early 2007 Jeb Bush used his own private email server for official business as Florida Governor.
Two ex-Walker aides charged with illegal campaigning, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, January 2012
Two former aides to Gov. Scott Walker, while he was Executive of Milwaukee County, used a private Internet network to conduct campaign work. They are later charged with illegally campaigning on government time.
Trove of Palin E-Mails Draws Press to Alaska, The New York Times, June 2011
In 2011, Sarah Palin releases more than 24,000 pages of emails sent from a private account while she was Alaska governor, responding to public records requests made in 2008. The emails reveal less-than scandalous details of her life including her early attempts to meet John McCain, a draft ghostwritten letter-to-the-editor in response to criticism against her and plans to see a controversial Christian pastor in Juno, Alaska.
U.S. Ambassador to Kenya J. Scott Gration resigns over 'differences' with Washington, The Washington Post, June 2012
Scott Gration, US Ambassador to Kenya, resigns in Jun. 2012 just before the publication of an Office of Inspector General report that found he had "repeatedly violated diplomatic security protocols at the embassy" by using a private email account for official business, according to the Washington Post.
Christie administration may have violated public records law, The Record, January 2014
The Record releases a cache of emails sent from personal accounts between top Chris Christie aides that reveals their plan to create a traffic jam over the George Washington Bridge possibly as retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee who refused to endorse Christie in the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election.
After Pledge of Sunlight, Gov. Cuomo Officials Keep Their Email in the Shadows, ProPublica, May 2014
ProPublica finds that top advisers to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo conduct government business through personal email accounts including Howard Glaser. ProPublica recently obtained emails from Glaser in which he touted his " significant, critical, and current input" on a deal that weakened rules to prevent misdeeds in the mortgage market.
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